In modern times, medicine has come to rely on medical imaging in order to safely and effectively diagnose and treat ailments in humans and animals. Recent medical imaging techniques have allowed for safer and more effective medical images to be produced using newly available technologies.
Among these technological advances has been the incorporation of advanced digital imaging and image processing technologies that have arisen as a part of the computer and information revolution.
The latest endoscopes, for example, have advanced from the crude telescopes of the past into complex electro-mechanical devices. Modern endoscopic imaging systems may incorporate fiber-optic technologies, multiple wavelength illumination, channels for the introduction of surgical tools, charge-coupled image sensors, and computerized analysis systems.
However modern endoscopy systems can be particularly susceptible to damage or may otherwise be prone to deviations from normal operation. This is because of their complexity, and because endoscopes are exposed to harsh environments during normal use. For example, the operation of a modern endoscopy system may be impaired by kinetic shocks or operator error, such as improper positioning or setting of the device. Further, before and after insertion into a body cavity an endoscope must be sterilized. This may entail exposure to water, harsh cleaning solvents, corrosive gasses, or high temperatures. During use, an endoscope may be exposed to temperature or humidity gradients, electrocautery equipment, radiation from imaging or therapeutic sources, or other environmental conditions. Any of these conditions can impair the operation of the endoscopy system.
While these modern systems make safer and more powerful diagnostic and therapeutic imaging possible, the complexity of such systems can cause difficulty in diagnosing the source of the problem when problems are found with an image produced by the system.
In more recent times, digital images have been encoded with additional non-image information as metadata. Typically, metadata includes information about the image, and may include information about the device which created the image. Several image metadata standards are known, including IPTC, XMP, EXIF, DCMI, and PLUS. However, no standard presently exists for medical imaging metadata.
In the past, metadata has been used only tangentially in medical imaging, and has not been used for system diagnostics.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,311,847 to Kotula et al. disclose a system for interfacing with multiple medical imaging modalities that includes a normalization module for normalizing hanging protocols for displaying the images. Effectively, the system uses metadata to organize the images for viewing. The system may analyze metadata associated with the images which includes equipment settings used to capture the information. A metadata extractor can extract the metadata from the images, in order to create manifest files. These manifest files are used to generate display rules for presenting the images in a normalized manner, in order to enable radiologists to work with images that are organized according to image and study semantics.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,738,683 to Cahill et al. disclose a system for analyzing a medical image for purposes of patient diagnosis. Various types of images and corresponding data are captured during a multi-modal examination. This information is fed into a learning engine that determines the characteristics of abnormalities in the medical images from different modalities, and a detecting engine that detects abnormalities within an image.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,133,546 to Dehmeshki et al. disclose a system for processing a digital medical image to identify medical abnormalities. Metadata associated with the image is used to derive optimum parameter values using a predetermined relationship between the metadata and the parameters. The medical image is then processed using the optimum parameter values and an algorithm in order to analyze the medical image for medical abnormalities.
However, no known system discloses or teaches the use of metadata to troubleshoot an endoscopy system or any other medical imaging system.
It is therefore desired to provide a system and method which overcomes these deficiencies.